Facing growing pressure to renounce the anti-Catholic bigotry of End Times Pastor John Hagee, John McCain on Friday resorted to that most Republican of accountability avoidance tactics, the Unpology.  Desperate to reassure Catholic voters without alienating Hagee's evangelical voters, McCain offered only the façade of contrition by conditionally repudiating Hagee's inflammatory comments only "if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."

The UK's Sunday Times has another article today, Tip-off thwarted nuclear spy ring probe, in their series about the penetration of US agencies by a criminal network of Turkish, Israeli and US government officials stealing nuclear secrets and selling them on the black market to the highest bidder.

The focus of this new Times article is the original outing of Brewster Jennings, the CIA cover company that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for. The article confirms that Marc Grossman, former # 3 State Dept official, and former Ambassador to Turkey, warned his Turkish associates to be wary of Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front operation. This disclosure occurred in the summer of 2001, two years prior to the outing of Valerie Plame.

The FBI warned the CIA about Grossman's activities and Brewster Jennings was dismantled shortly thereafter.

Many progressives, for many years, have dreamt of seeing Bush impeached.  We were heartbroken when our so-called leaders took it off the table.  We constantly call out for investigations, but get nowhere.  Why?  Bill and Hillary let the United States Office of the Independent Counsel expire in 1999.  This handed Bush basically free reign over the Presidency.

Another day, another revelation of blatant obstruction of justice by the Bush administration.  The White House admitted yesterday that they had destroyed email tapes that including the period of March to October, 2003.  This is the time period related to the leak of a CIA operative's name to the press.  According to the White House, they lost the originals and recycled the backups from this critical period.  The announcement came minutes before a court-ordered deadline for turning over the information.  Oops.

Two breaking stories on Wednesday once again highlighted the Bush administration's unprecedented cloak of secrecy and its perpetual quest for plausible deniability.  First, the White House acknowledged that it haphazardly recycled computer backup tapes, likely ensuring that crucial emails before October 2003 are lost forever.  Then, Americans learned that the retiring CIA station chief in Thailand asked for and received permission in 2005 to destroy videotapes of Al Qaeda detainee interrogations.  Together, these latest episodes of disappearing data might be called the Tales of the Tape.

It was only a matter of time before the conservative chattering classes extended the Republicans' perpetual "criminalization of politics" defense to the exploding CIA tapes scandal.  On Friday, the Wall Street Journal obliged, claiming the Justice Department's probe into the spy agency's destruction of detainee interrogation videos was the equivalent of "criminalizing the CIA."  Following the script from the Tom Delay, Valerie Plame outing, U.S. attorneys purge and other Republicans scandals, the Journal's contortion is just the latest right-wing effort to recast potential conservative criminality as mere political disagreement.

On Friday, right-wing mouthpiece and failed Bush Labor nominee Linda Chavez demonstrated the Iron Law of Republican scandal management.  Claiming the CIA official purportedly responsible for destroying detainee interrogation tapes "deserves a medal," Chavez showed the conservative commitment to rewarding those who conceal White House wrong-doing.  The corollary, of course, is the GOP Payback Principle: those exposing Bush administration criminality should be prosecuted.

Americans watching President Bush on Thursday could be forgiven for confusing his press conference with the movie Groundhog Day.  In the 1993 film, Bill Murray wakes each morning only to realize he's reliving the previous day.  Discussing the mushrooming CIA tapes scandal yesterday, President Bush claimed he had no recollection of knowing about the tapes' destruction in 2005 until briefed by CIA director Michael Hayden last month.  Of course, that's virtually the same line he offered regarding the controversial Iran NIE just two weeks earlier.  And as it turns out, Bush has been reading from the same script ever since the 2003 Plamegate affair.

CNN is reporting that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has dropped his appeal of his federal convictions of perjury, false statement and obstruction of justice.  Libby was convicted of the multiple felonies in the course of leaking to the press the name and CIA identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, an undercover CIA agent working to stop the proliferation of "weapons of mass destruction," and the husband of administration critic and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Although other people have diaried the issue of Scott McClellan revealing that George Bush was the one who lied to him about the outing of Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson and Valerie herself are having their say today about what that act constituted: treason. Their point is that the Mainstream Media are yet again complicit with the Bush Administration.

We knew this, but read on for their point of view, which was posted yesterday in the Huffington Post.

I mean, right?

I mean, he did say

[I]f someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration

about the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name to the press, right?

Right now the recommended list features several diaries regarding an alleged excerpt of former White House spokesperson Scott McClellan's forthcoming book. From that excerpt, it appeared that McClellan was alleging Bush knew his staff had outed CIA agent Valerie Plame and had lied about it:

Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. . .

There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

Explosive stuff, huh? Sure is.

Too bad McClellan is nothing more than a coward engaging in a cheap PR stunt. He has now disavowed that Bush knew about the outing.

By L C Johnson (bio/blog)

Former Presidential spokesliar, oops, I mean spokesman, Scott McClellan, reminded us this week that the fish rots from the head.  McClellan drops the truth bombshell that implicates George Bush and Dick Cheney in the sordid outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.  CNN reports that:

Amid a swelling controversy about the leak of Valerie Wilson's name, McClellan went to the White House podium in October 2003 and told reporters that Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, had not been involved. . .

There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes in his new book, "What Happened," which is to be released in April. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."

On October 7th, 2003, President Bush famously declared of the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame, "I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official."  Now we have more insight as to Bush's misplaced confidence that the truth would remain hidden.  In his new tell-all book, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan claims President Bush himself played an instrumental role in the failed cover up.

Bravo to Scotty for coming clean, only years after he already knew that Rove, Libby, Cheney AND Bush all lied to him about national security matters – matters of war, life and death.  To sell an ill-conceived invasion of a sovereign country that was by no means connected to 9/11 or an imminent threat to anything other than its own crumbling and inevitable decline.

Don’t you think that this little bit of information would have been more important to divulge when you first knew about it, instead of admitting it in a book that you are profiting off of?  What would a patriot who is more interested in serving his or her country think of withholding this information?  Don’t you think that Mr. Fitzgerald would have benefited from that information?  Wouldn’t the grand jury be interested to know that Rove is involved in passing false information to the White House’s chief spokesperson with the intent to deceive the press corps, Americans and the rest of the world?

McClelland Confirms Bush et al Conspired to Leak and Cover-up the Leak of Plame's Identity. Impeachment should Follow

Both Bush and Cheney should be investigated, impeached and removed from office.

Once again, Dodd leads on the issues that matter most to us.

Just in to my inbox:

Des Moines, IA - Senator and Presidential candidate Chris Dodd, today, released the following statement in response to the claims of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan that he "unknowingly passed along false information" to the American public and that "the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in [his] doing so," including the Vice-President and the President:

Doddmania below the fold:

This is just a diaryette, because I didn't see this published today at DailyKos, but maybe it was. Many of you remember Jason Leopold, reporter at truthout.org, who went out on a limb to assert that Karl Rove would be indicted in the CIA leak Case, back when this was being investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald. Turns out this did not happen, Rove was not indicted, and many criticized Leopold for sloppy and non-credible reporting. On the flip see the 2-part interview Jason Leopold just completed with Valerie Plame and published to YouTube today.